Pre-E3 2005: Soulcalibur III: Hands-On

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How long can a soul keep burning anyway?

By Jeremy Dunham

Hot off the heels of Tekken 5, Namco looks to continue its fighting game winning streak with its latest sword-to-sword brawler, Soulcalibur III. Developed exclusively for the PlayStation 2 and boasting a number of interesting new features, Soulcalibur III is being constructed with the intent of making it the best fighter available for the system. That's an ambitious goal to be sure, and one that will be weighed against some truly difficult competition.

Aspirations aside, the E3 build of Soulcalibur III was a lot more polished than I expected it to be. Running at smooth 60 frames per second, the visuals are right up there with Tekken 5 in terms of animation and detail. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Soulcalibur III looks a wee-bit better than Tekken in terms of its environments -- with brilliantly lighted background objects and rather sophisticated stage designs. Of the four stages available in the build, my personal favorite was the giant clockwork level. Though it was nothing special in terms of its concept, the combination of working and moving parts, use of color, and overall architecture made for a pretty admirable sight. Other graphical upgrades, like motion blurs, additional particle effects, and more natural-looking slashing animations were worth noting too.

A little less progressive was the gameplay. Almost identical to Soulcalibur II at this point, the speed, pacing, and mechanics seem near-exact to 2003's popular fighter. Kicks, guards, and horizontal / vertical slashes work the same way now as they always have. When playing as returning favorite Mitsurugi Heishiro, for instance, an adherence to his SC1 roots were more than apparent. All the same moves that I used to use to abuse co-workers in the past were available here too, with a couple of slight tweaks to make things feel a little bit different than before (highlights: his wheel kick had a bit more range on it while the steel slicer was tone down a bit).

The other playable character in the demo was a slime-green chakram-wielding psycho girl named Tira (one of three brand new fighters), and using her was a lot of fun. If I had to pigeonhole her fighting style, I'd say that it falls somewhere between Maxi and Voldo -- that is, plenty of bizarre and powerful moves mixed with a smattering of chained "perma-moves" (ala the Nunchaku kata). One of her coolest moves was a neat jump rope-style low attack that allowed her to move forward and clip her opponent's feet two or three times in a row. When comboed correctly, it was easy to chain this into a nifty little back kick and winding horizontal slash that took off a ton of damage. I whipped GameSpy video editor Ryan O'Donnell two times in a row with this little technique. There's no real point to mentioning that little tidbit of course, but I just thought I'd share anyway.

Unfortunately the other new combatants (Zasalamel and Setsuka) weren't available for play in the E3 version of the game. I did get to see Zasalamel in action as a CPU opponent, however, and from the looks of it he seems to be a close-range fighter with some mean speed-oriented moves. No other fighters were shown (except for an all-black berserker guy that was user-created), but it's possible that or two could still be lurking in there somewhere just waiting for someone to find them.

One of the things that surprised me about this version of the game, though, is that it already has a working feature set. Though not complete by any means (the anticipated "create-a-character" can't be accessed, the menu did boast a few variations on the versus game (including the ability to set up your own rules set before each fight) as well as a quick snippet from the "Tale of Souls" story game. Longtime role-playing fans should recognize the interface for this mode right off the bat -- as It has the same blip-based overworld map as Final Fantasy X and Digital Devil Saga. But unlike those games that required you to do quite a bit before advancing the storyline, Soulcalibur III tells you what happens before you even fight anyone. And once a battle is won, you'll have the option of choosing one of multiple paths to continue the branching plot. But before you ask the big question yourself, I might as well answer it for you: there's only one ending per character -- just multiple ways to get there.

Other than that there wasn't much else to speak about in the E3 build of Soulcalibur III. Though I did find out an interesting piece of news regarding this year's Expo Tournament and what its winner will get to do. You see, while the first prize is still unknown, the champion will at least get to go head to head with one of the game's primary designers in an ultimate showdown match. Even better, the winner will get to do it on a special "Final Match" version of the game that boasts new characters and levels not playable on the floor. I'm betting that seasonal IGN contributor and E3 Soulcalibur champion for two years running, Andrew Alfonso, will bring home the gold once again. I'll keep you updated to tell you what happens.